And 'The Rest'
by Signy1
Summary: Sometimes it's not that easy to figure out just who we are, or where we fit. It's not a simple question, and there's rarely a simple answer. Mary Ann doesn't have a pat label, like most of her fellows do, and she has to decide for herself just who- and what- she wants to be. But nobody ever said she had to do it alone.


Gilligan, standing in the waist-deep water, pulled a lobster out of the trap. It was a nice big one, and he took a minute to savor the triumph. The quiet sobs that suddenly broke the silence were, to say the least, unexpected, but there they were, nonetheless. He looked at the lobster again, suddenly guilty. They'd eaten a lot of shellfish since their shipwreck, but he'd never heard one cry before.

"Hey, I'm sorry, little guy," he said. "But look at it from my point of view. If I don't bring something back to camp, I'm pretty sure they'll boil _me_ for chowder." Rethinking that, he said, "Not that you should really care about that, I guess."

The lobster waved its claws in a definitive sort of way. It was quite evident that he was not moved by the argument. Gilligan glanced around, then, making sure there were no witnesses, and slipped the creature back into the water. "Swim hard, little guy," he said. "And the next time you see a lobster trap, leave it alone!"

Another sob, then another, was his only answer, and there was no way it was coming from the water. Forgetting all about lobster, he waded back to shore, where, it turned out, Mary Ann was sitting, half-hidden behind a clump of bamboo. "Hey, what's wrong, Mary Ann? If you really wanted that lobster, I'll go back and catch him again, I promise; he can't have gotten too far—"

She sniffled, wiped her eyes. "No, Gilligan, it's not the lobster. I just…" she sighed. "I just feel kind of low today."

He frowned. "Well, we could always go climb up the cliffs, if you'd like; that's about the highest spot."

That won him a watery smile. "No, Gilligan," she repeated. "Not that kind of low. It's just that, well, Ginger is so beautiful and glamorous, and the Howells are so cultured and sophisticated, and the Professor is so smart, and the Skipper is so brave, and what am I? Just plain old Mary Ann."

He plunked himself down on the ground next to her, arms hugging his knees. "Well, you could be the dumb one if you want. I don't mind taking turns." He grinned at her.

"Gilligan! Don't talk like that. You're more than just the 'dumb one,'" she said reprovingly.

"And you're more than 'just' Mary Ann," he replied. "You think we'd have made it a week without you here? I don't."

She sighed. "Yes, I have a real gift for making breadfruit muffins," she said wryly.

"Well, yeah, you do," he said, licking his lips in happy reminiscence. "But it's not really that. You keep everyone happy, because you're always so happy and hopeful… so no matter what happens, you're always there, steady as a rock. You don't know how much we all depend on you."

"That's very sweet of you to say," she said, not especially convinced. It still seemed to come down to her willingness to cook, sew, and launder while keeping her complaints and dissatisfactions to herself. And even if it was meant as a compliment, being compared to a rock wasn't exactly flattering.

He cocked his head, looked at her searchingly. "You know, Ginger is definitely pretty, but she's really not any prettier than you. She just wears a lot more goop on her face and fancier dresses, and you could always do that, too, if you wanted."

Mary Ann nodded slowly. It was true. Ginger worked hard at her appearance, and her beauty regimen was extensive. She spent hours improvising and utilizing beauty products, her hair was always styled to perfection, and she dressed to kill. Mary Ann had to admit that tying her hair in pigtails and calling it a day could not really compare.

"So if you want to be glamorous, you can. And the Howells… well, they're definitely into all that high society junk. But they'd be over the moon if you wanted to give them a hand at their country club. Mrs. Howell could show you how it all works; fish forks and dessert forks and folding napkins into little flowers and how to pour tea." He smiled, a bit sheepishly. "I never get the forks right, no matter how often she reminds me, and I'm not allowed to pour anything hot anymore…" he trailed off, obviously remembering something unpleasant, then shook it off and went on. "But _you_ , now, you'd probably be great at all the fancy stuff. Mrs. Howell's always saying that she wishes we could be more like back home. She'd love it if you asked her to teach you how to be sophisticated like her, and Mr. Howell would love it if Mrs. Howell had someone to talk to, and _I'd_ love it if they had something to do that made them both happy, because then maybe they'd yell at me a little less."

Mary Ann thought about it. She already took care of the Howells' housekeeping, and she wasn't sure that waitressing at the country club was really the answer. "Mrs. Howell does get lonely, you know," Gilligan went on. "And she likes you. You might even end up getting adopted."

"Well, we don't need to go _that_ far," Mary Ann giggled.

"I didn't think so either, but you know how Dear Old Dad can be," he drawled in his pseudo-Harvard tones. "When he makes up his mind about something, by J.P. Morgan, it stays made up!"

The giggle became a laugh, and he was not without a feeling of real satisfaction. It always upset him when any of the castaways were unhappy, but somehow it was even worse when it was sunny Mary Ann. He continued in his own voice.

"And about the Professor. Is it that he's _smart_ , or is it that he _knows stuff_? You're smart too, so if you asked the Professor to teach you stuff, I bet he'd like it. And it sure couldn't hurt if we had another Professor around to think about sciencey ways to get us rescued."

That won him a startled look. "You really think I could learn the sort of things he knows?"

Bingo. He shrugged. "Why not? He's a teacher and you're smart."

"Oh, I could never learn all that the Professor knows," she said, looking away.

"How come? If it's just a matter of time, I could take over the laundry. That would free up a couple of hours, anyway," he offered.

"No, it's not that," she said, obviously casting about for reasons that extended past 'because' and not finding them. "We don't even have any textbooks or anything, and he wouldn't want to waste his time trying to teach me. He already has Ginger as his assistant when he needs one."

"Aw, you don't know that. You haven't even asked him yet. And if Ginger can learn his science things, you definitely could." He bit his lip, thinking hard. "Anyway, how different could it be—chemistry and cooking? Both of them are just about mixing up recipes, with the exact right amounts of this and that at the exact right time. You're real good at that, and so it's just another kind of recipe."

Gilligan would be the first to admit that he wasn't the most academically inclined person, but the logic seemed to make sense to him. And if he didn't know—or care—much about the sort of science that involved test tubes and smelly stuff, he did know a lot about people, and what made them tick. And he knew pretty much everything there was to know about feeling stupid, or worse, feeling that other people thought you were. And that wasn't right. Not for Mary Ann. That couldn't be allowed.

He watched Mary Ann's thoughts bubbling across her expressive face as carefully as the Professor did his beakers and tubes, and he was fairly certain he'd hit on the right combination of acids to bases, or whatever they were called, when she suddenly blushed, leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek.

"You're wonderful," she said. "And you've made me feel so much better. Thank you, Gilligan. You've done it again!"

He blinked as innocently as he could. "Gee, all I did was tell you the truth; I don't know what was so wonderful about that. But I'm real glad you're feeling better."

"Oh! I am," she said happily. "I've got to go and… well, I have to go."

"Yeah, and I'd better get back out there and see what I can rustle up for dinner, or Skipper will kill me," he said, letting her off the hook. "If that lobster didn't come back, maybe I can get some crabs or something."

OoOoOoO

A week or two later, Gilligan was pumping away at the washing machine, and somewhat regretting his impulsive offer to take over the chore, when Ginger came by with a basket of sheets. "This is the last of it," she said cheerfully.

"Good," he said, stopping the cycle and stretching. "I think I've already pedaled from Pittsburgh to Pasadena."

"Well, all aboard for Palo Alto," she said, scooping the now-clean clothing out of the machine and replacing them with the sheets. "You know, that was a really nice thing you did for Mary Ann."

"What, the laundry? Sure, any time."

"Not the laundry. Or, at least, not _just_ the laundry. I've never seen her as happy as she's been since starting these science lessons."

"Yeah, she sounds like she's having fun. She and the Professor were talking all through breakfast and I didn't understand a single word of it."

"And, if you noticed, she's put her hair up in curls every day this week, she's had me helping her with her makeup, and she borrowed a pair of earrings from Mrs. Howell."

He frowned thoughtfully, pushing back his cap to scratch his head. He hadn't noticed, actually. "I… I guess she sort of looked a little different from usual…?"

She laughed. "You men. You're all the same," she said fondly. "None of you can ever see what's going on right beneath your noses."

He grinned. "You women. You like us that way," he said with a wink. "Anyway, back to work. Tampa to Tulsa. Here goes nothing." He started up the machine again, and set it spinning. It was like anything else in life; sometimes things just needed a bit of a nudge to get where they needed to be.

OoOoOoO

Author's note: I neither know nor care who, precisely, Mary Ann was hoping to impress with her newly acquired poise and glamour. I quite deliberately left it open-ended; a girl deserves _some_ privacy. You, the reader, can decide for yourself whether she had designs on a fellow castaway, the (somewhat random) fiancé from the first reunion film, a handsome warrior from the next island over, or anyone else in the wide world. I'm just glad she was able to repair her self-image a bit. We all need to find our own labels.


End file.
